Abstract
Lithium battery cathodes contain lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Recycling of spent lithium batteries aims to recover these elements for re-use. Liberation of cathode materials from other metals in the battery such as aluminium, copper, and iron, is essential to obtain a good leaching efficiency in the recovery of valuable metals from end-of-life lithium batteries. This study investigates the behaviour of cathode materials and other metals in spent 18650 lithium batteries during leaching in H2SO4 solution with and without NaOH pre-treatment. Dissolution of aluminium using NaOH is a selective method to separate the metal from other elements. The influence of a 2-hour NaOH pre-treatment on subsequent acid leaching of cathode materials was investigated at both room temperature and 80°C. The extraction of aluminium increased to 75% at a higher temperature. Lithium concentration in the pregnant leach solution from acid leaching also increases with NaOH pre-treatment. The pre-treatment had a negligible effect on nickel, manganese, iron, and copper extraction. However, the cobalt extraction with NaOH pre-treatment was significantly lower. The result was likely due to indirect impact of less hydrogen gas was generated from a lower Al amount. The lattice structure of the leach residue for the sample with NaOH pre-treatment was monoclinic rather than rhombohedral due to stronger delithiation.
Highlights
Lithium batteries are increasingly being used in many applications both for electronic devices and energy storage
The Rietveld refinement of the XRD spectra for the feed contains features corresponding to the cathode materials in the sample, lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC), and lithium manganese oxide (Li2MnO3)
The elemental composition of the feed in table 1 shows that cobalt is the dominant metal of interest in the sample, contributing to the primary cathode type of LCO
Summary
Lithium batteries are increasingly being used in many applications both for electronic devices and energy storage. The development of an efficient recycling system is essential to recover the valuable elements in these batteries for sustainable use of material resources [1,2]. Both pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy are used in lithium battery recycling to extract the metals of the cathode material. A further process is required to recover Li from the slag with hydrometallurgy, but the process consumes a lot of energy [4]
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